Binary Domain

Voice recognition seems like the next big thing. Apple’s making the most headway into the field with Siri on the iPhone 4S, but in video games, it’s had a mixed history. Ubisoft tried to apply it to Tom Clancy’s EndWar, the real-time strategy game, and it was unplayable. On the other hand, Microsoft has found success with it on the Kinect. Once one gets used to telling the Xbox 360 what to do, it becomes second nature and it works fairly well.

With Binary Domain, Sega’s Yakuza Studio is trying to incorporate a similar technology to the squad-based third-person shooter. Instead of pressing buttons to command a squad, players can bark out orders. On paper, it seems like a brilliant idea. It deepens in the immersion and talking with the AI allies strengthens the bond players feel for them.

If it works, Sega could be on the verge of a breakthrough, but unfortunately during my hands-on demo, everything didn’t go as planned. Maybe it was the environment (I was in a room with several other shouting journalists.) or maybe it was the fact that I need to spend more time on calibration but the voice recognition didn’t work as expected.

At E3, you always expect to be impressed by the big-budget, highly publicized titles. They have the most explosions. They soak up every inch of the spotlight. Those games are fine, but what I like most about E3 is finding that one project that comes out of nowhere to impress me. Scribblenauts did it a few years ago. Guitar Hero piqued my interest enough for me to buy it during the holiday season.

This year, the project that surprised me most was Binary Domain. I faintly heard of the title in the past few months and thought nothing of it. It sounded like every other shooter released in the past five years, but behind closed doors, the team behind the Yakuza series proved that its latest project is more than a Gears of War clone.